vvVISUAL VISA
THE LIVING ATLAS An exploration in three layers

FIELD NOTES · SWITZERLAND

Where we call home.

A landscape of mountains, water,
and the lives shaped between them.

THE SWISS STUDYSwitzerlandCHE / The Swiss study
Reading the landscapePreparing terrain, waterways & population…
SEE
ANGLE
POPULATION DENSITY people / km²
1101001,00010,000+
Taller columns, more people · square-root height
ELEVATION metres
01,5673,1334,700
Relief exaggerated 4× for readability
WaterwaysFine tributaries → major rivers
Drag to orbit · Scroll to zoom · Right-drag to pan · Click to inspect
FIELD NOTESLife follows the landscape.
CHELAND / WATER / PEOPLE

A geography of belonging

Life follows the landscape.

Between the Jura and the Alps, cities gather across the Swiss Plateau. Follow the Aare and Rhine through this settled corridor, then trace the Rhône into the steep valleys of Valais.

Geography is one part of the story.
History, trade, and policy shape settlement too.

Built from geographic data. Made to be explored.Population · WorldPop 2020 / Terrain · Mapzen / USGS / Water · © OpenStreetMap

THE LIVING ATLAS / CHE

Reading this landscape.

This is an exploratory map of Switzerland, built from measured terrain, modelled population, and mapped waterways. The layers share geographic coordinates and can be explored independently.

Terrain is the ground.

Approximately 450 m display spacing. The current relief setting is 4× vertical exaggeration. The elevation control changes the terrain only; switch it off for a flat base. Below-sea-level elevations use the zero-height display base.

Columns are people.

WorldPop’s 2020 UN-adjusted estimates, in approximately 0.9 km display cells. Country overviews aggregate counts; regional studies use the source grid. Density uses each cell’s geographic area. Column height = 0.007 × √density in scene units; colour uses a logarithmic scale. These are estimates, not individual people or building heights.

Lines trace water.

OpenStreetMap river and stream centre lines. Coverage is uneven. Stronger lines distinguish larger river networks and curated significant rivers using mapped names and river/stream classifications. Blue italic labels with wave markers identify selected rivers; city labels use green dot markers. Widths show relative emphasis, not measured channel width or discharge. Lakes, canals, and flood extents are not included.

The rendering

A WebGL scene with a detailed elevation mesh, baked relief and cavity shading, physical materials, shadow maps, and instanced population columns. The PNG export renders the current view at 3,840 × 2,400. This interactive renderer uses rasterization; it is not a path-traced render.

For an offline print edition, Rayshader / rayrender or Blender Cycles can add path-traced light transport and softer indirect shadows to the same geographic inputs.

Data & attribution

Source details will appear once the dataset loads.

Population is a 2020 snapshot, not a present-day census. Boundary and population masks differ at some borders. This map shows spatial relationships; it does not establish that geography caused a particular settlement pattern.